The Book of Ben
by Amelia Elizabeth
Summary: Part Four in the "Jon and Erika" series. Their family now complete with Adalie, Frankie and Ben, Jonathan and Erika's story continues as Jon serves as the Starfleet Chief of Staff before going on to help form the Federation. More sweet family fluff and the adorable antics of the three Archer children.
1. Chapter 1

The Book of Ben, Chapter 1

Part Four in the "Jon and Erika" series. Their family now complete with Adalie, Frankie and Ben, Jonathan and Erika's story continues as Jon serves as the Starfleet Chief of Staff before going on to help form the Federation. More sweet family fluff.

A/N: This time, Erika's not going to be pregnant! I hope you all enjoy this latest installment. As usual, please read and review.

###

"Admiral?" The intercom line from her aide's desk beeped.

"What is it, Asa?"

"Admiral Dykstra is on the line for you."

Erika frowned. She couldn't fathom why the head of Starfleet's Research and Engineering division would be calling her unless it had something to do with her husband. _What had he done now?_

"Put him through," she replied warily.

"Yes ma'am." A second later the standard Starfleet seal on her computer screen was replaced by the image of the admiral.

"Joe, what can I do for you?" she asked, trying to be cheerful.

"Hi Erika," Dykstra muttered. "Listen, by any chance is your husband over there with you?"

"What did he do?" she put her face in her hands.

"It's what he didn't do that is bothering us," Dykstra said with a half smile. "He's not home with the kids today is he?"

Erika shook her head. "He went to pick up our eldest from school and then take her to daycare. He should have been back by now."

"Have you gotten a hold of his staff yet?" Erika asked hopefully.

"We thought we would try you first."

"Good thinking," she nodded. "When I find him…?"

"Send him over here. We've got some things to go over with him before the end of the day."

"You got it."

"Thanks Erika," Joe gave her a grateful look that Erika was more than used to seeing from other officers who were having some sort of issue with Jon. Most of the time it was because Jon was asking them to do something that they felt was impossible, impractical or even insane. Sometimes it was because of something he had said in a meeting when he let his passion get the best of him. The scientists who had first proposed the secondary hull retrofit to the NX class had given her that look when she agreed to at least ask Jon to think about their ideas without throwing the plans at them, literally. The doctors at Medical had given her that look when Jon refused to go in for his physicals and she had finally gone around his back and gotten it on his agenda. Trip had given her that look when she promised to make Jon reconsider forcing his best friend to watch another water polo match. This was going to be one of those times.

She quickly left her office and headed towards the lift, her mind trying to think of all the places Jon could be. She knew that in this day of technology there was probably a faster way to track him down but right now she very much wanted to look him in the eye and ask him what on Earth was going on.

It wasn't unusual for him to be called away without a moment's notice, either to brief the council, meet with the allies, or do something else that Erika was certain she didn't have clearance for. He was the Chief of Staff of Starfleet after all; it was an incredibly time consuming job that usually chewed up and spat out officers within a few years. Jon had only been in the office for seven months and already she noticed signs of fatigue in him that hadn't been there before. She had asked him about it the other night, and he had smiled tiredly.

"You know how when we first became commanders, everything we did seemed terrifying and new? It took all this energy not to fall apart, to just hold yourself together and trust that you knew what you were doing," he had said when she asked. She had nodded, reaching up to brush his hair back from his forehead. "It felt like that was the most important thing in the world, the center of our universes. I went through the same thing when I became a captain. It was like treading water for the first couple months."

"And now?" she had asked, tilting her head to the side and looking at him intently.

"Now I can only laugh at how seriously I took everything," he chuckled. "That work was important but I really had no idea how much heavier the burden was for those above me. This," he had gestured around his office, "this is much bigger than anything I could have imagined. I don't know how Greg Black did it all those years. I feel foolish for ever thinking that what I was dealing with was even significant compared to this."

"But it was significant," she had said, holding his gaze. "It was the most important work anyone could be doing back then. Yes this is different but it in no way diminishes the very real pressure we felt to accomplish our goals. The whole planet was watching us."

"They used to stop us on the street," he had laughed remembering.

She had nodded, touching his cheek with her hand. "You are doing amazingly. Everyone says so. I know you probably don't feel like that right now. You are allowed to relax."

"Thanks, Rike," he had said softly.

Now as she walked into the outer offices, she wondered if he had decided to take her advice. His staff nodded at her respectfully and she went straight into the private office of the most powerful man in the organization.

There was the Starfleet Chief of Staff, lying on the floor and coloring with his five-year-old daughter. They had several coloring books splayed out across the finely polished wood floor and a large box of crayons placed in the middle. Every now and then, Jon would look up and realize he didn't have the color he needed and, upon noticing that his daughter had it in her little pile of favorite colors, whisper politely asking to borrow it for a minute. Sometimes he would point to his picture, one that Adalie no doubt had picked out for him to color, and as her opinion about what color the tree should be or what color the sky should be. It was one of those moments that Erika was walking in on now.

"Hey, Addie?"

"Hmm?"

"What color should the sun be?" Jon asked, as he looked up noticing Erika standing in the doorway, her arms folded but a smile on her face.

"Yellow, of course," Adalie answered without looking up.

"Of course," Jon repeated. "But what if I wanted to make it blue?"

"Our sun isn't a b-type star, Dad," their daughter sighed exasperatedly.

"Does my picture have to be realistic?"

"Yes," Adalie noticed her mother watching them closely and frowned at Jon.

"Is Mom still watching?" Jon asked, conspiratorially.

Addie turned her head to glance at her mother cautiously. Erika gave her an encouraging smile and watched as her daughter turned back to the man lying on the floor, nodding.

"Does she look mad?" her husband pressed on with an exaggerated expression of worry. Adalie studied his face seriously then looked back at her mother.

"Nope."

"Do you think she's here because I missed a meeting because I was coloring with you?" he leaned his face close to his daughter's and her serious look changed to a bright smile. He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and stood up.

"Hi," he said, as he walked over to his wife.

"You didn't miss a meeting," Erika said with a frown.

"Oh good, I had lost track of…"

"You missed three," she continued. Jon's eyes widened.

"You're kidding," he insisted, raising a hand to his forehead.

"Nope," she said. "They called me over because they thought you would be in my office." She watched as the realization slowly set in and her husband collapsed on the couch. "They called me because no one has seen you all afternoon. You want to tell me what happened?"

"She didn't want to go to daycare," Jon said simply, nodding at their daughter who was busy still coloring.

"Tell me the other two aren't running around this building unsupervised," Erika groaned.

"No, Ben and Frankie are still there," Jon admitted. "Someone just didn't want to go after kindergarten so I told her that if she was very quiet she could come here and play in my office while I worked."

"That sounds like a sensible plan," Erika acknowledged, but then again most things her husband did started out sensibly. "What went wrong?" None of them ever seemed to end that way.

"Coloring looked more fun?"

"Jon!"

"What? The meetings weren't that important or someone would have actually called over here to find out why I wasn't there. Besides," he said, giving her a grin, "Someone recently told me that I am allowed to relax a bit from time to time."

"Just make sure you get to R & D by the end of the day, okay?" she sighed as he nodded dutifully. "Well, at least let me see what you were coloring."

Jon's smile grew. "Hey Addie, bring our pictures over here to show Mom."

###


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A/N: This one is for Bones and Ryn, a couple I ship in real life, because both of them could use a little fluff today. And as usual, I don't own ENT, because if I did, things would have turned out just like this.

###

Benjamin Archer was playing hard to get. He was acting shy and buried his head in his mother's shoulder. Erika leaned down and whispered in his ear that he didn't have to be shy and he looked up a little, still staying close in his mother's arms. Finally, he smiled.

"There we go!" Sam Gardner said with a smile. Erika couldn't ever remember seeing him this happy about having a small child in his midst, but then Ben seemed to have that effect on people. They all seemed to adore him.

Ben had been fussy and fidgety all throughout the wedding dinner, so much so that Erika had to walk with him in her arms a few times to calm him down. There was just something about sitting still that didn't seem to sit well with Ben Archer and Erika knew exactly where he got that tendency. In fact, his sisters seemed to have inherited their father's restlessness as well. So they had walked around and around the tables, stopping to say hi to everyone they knew. Ben had charmed them all, smiling and burbling as he tried to eat his mother's corsage. Several people had offered to take him off her hands for a little while and let her enjoy the dancing, but Erika didn't mind. Besides, there was no telling what this one might get into if he really did take after his father.

When Erika finally calmed her little boy down and made her way back to her seat, she noticed that her middle child had disappeared. Adalie, a flower girl in the wedding was present and accounted for, and was the darling of the bridal party. Everyone wanted to dance with her and she was more than willing to oblige. Frankie, at three and a half, had absolutely no interest in dancing what so ever and that was what had worried Erika the most. She nervously scanned the area, a beautiful outdoor garden space with lush trees and faint lighting, until she had finally spotted the telltale ruffled dress that Frankie had already tried to wriggle out of at least twice. She was sitting in the middle of a flowerbed, playing quietly by herself. Erika did a double take to make sure it was her child. She looked closely and saw that it wasn't really a flowerbed, not anymore. Every single tulip and been carefully dug up and was now lying off to the side. And Frankie was covered in dirt. Yes, that was her daughter.

Erika picked up Ben and quickly went to go find her husband. He wasn't hard to spot, even amongst all the Starfleet dress uniforms. A small part of her brain was congratulating Starfleet on choosing a distinctive uniform for the Chief of Staff. She also thought momentarily about congratulating her husband on achieving a rank that entitled him to a distinctive uniform but then she thought better of it.

"Hi," she said when he saw her.

"Hey," he smiled, clearly oblivious to what was about to happen. He leaned over to give both her and the baby a quick kiss.

"You weren't by any chance supposed to watch Frankie while this one and I were walking around, were you?" Erika asked in the sweetest voice she could muster.

Jon's face fell. "Oh no."

"Yes 'oh no.'"

"What did she do?" Jon put his face in his hands but Erika could see that he was trying not to laugh.

"Come see for yourself," she said, leading him over their daughter. When they got to the pile of dirt formerly known as a flowerbed, Erika felt her eyes widen. The damage was worse than she had initially thought. An entire sixteen square foot chunk of the garden was missing its flowers, with dirt scattered everywhere and petals and long flower stocks littering the ground. Frankie saw them coming and instantly grinned.

"Hi!" she said, utterly cheerfully.

"Frankie….." her father began.

"Flowers?" she held out a crumpled bouquet.

"No thanks."

"Jon…."

"Kiddo, what did you do?" he finally asked, bending down to examine her handiwork.

"I was gardening."

"I think de-gardening would be more like it," Jon muttered to himself.

"Frankie, you can't go around digging up other people's gardens," Erika sighed as she looked over the damage.

"Not good?" she asked.

"No," Jon shook his head. "Not good. Come on, let's get this cleaned up."

"Boy, your kids sure do know how to party," Trip Tucker said, as he walked up behind Erika. "I turn around for one minute and this one is schmoozing with most of the Starfleet brass," he pointed at Ben, " and that one is tearing it up on the dance floor. And this one," he paused as he looked at Frankie, "well, I'm not sure what she was doing."

"I was gardening," Frankie explained again.

"Looks like you made a mess of things," Trip smiled.

"Not really," Frankie sighed.

"Oh no?" Trip asked, scooping the little girl into his arms.

"Trip, she's covered in dirt and mud," Jon warned.

"It don't bother me," Trip said, brushing a smudge off of Frankie's nose. "Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that neither of your parents ask _why _you were gardening. Is that right?" Trip raised an eyebrow at Jon who just shrugged. "So tell me, Frankie Lou, why exactly were you digging up the flowers in my new mother-in-law's backyard?"

"I wanted to make you a bouquet," Frankie said as if it was obvious.

"But why did you want to do that?" her godfather persisted.

"Because you said you wanted one just like Addie!"

Trip laughed and suddenly Erika knew exactly what had happened. Right before the wedding had started, Trip had spotted Adalie carefully practicing her ever-important duties. Never mind that both Jon and Erika had patiently walked up and down the halls of their home, showing Adalie how to walk slowly and carefully and even going so far as to fashion her a makeshift bunch of flowers out of a stack of old report papers. And never mind that they had allowed her to practice her walk down the aisle by going back and forth between their offices, which as Jon mentioned was about four billion times longer than the wedding aisle was bound to be. But Adalie didn't listen. She had been entrusted with this important responsibility and she intended to carry it out to the best of her ability. Jon had muttered to Erika that if this one didn't join Starfleet and become a captain then they had utterly failed as parents, but Erika had just give him a whack on the head. From day one she had been adamant that they wouldn't push any of their children to join the service. She worried that they would feel the pressure to live up to their parents' lofty and continually climbing achievements in the fleet and she wanted them to have the freedom to pursue their own careers what ever they might be. Jon wanted just one of them to go into the fleet, but he too didn't want to push them towards something.

Regardless, Adalie had been nervous before the wedding and Trip had picked her up in his arms and told her just how beautiful she looked and how she was going to be the best flower girl his wedding could possibly have. And then he had told her that her bouquet of flowers looked so pretty that he wished he could have one of his own. Adalie of course had giggled and finally settled down but Frankie who was sitting patiently with her mother nearby had apparently heard everything. At the time, Erika had only worried that Frankie would feel jealous of her older sister and the special attention she was getting but it didn't seem to bother her. But what did bother her was that her darling godfather wanted something that he didn't have and she was determined to get it for him.

"Oh Franks," Trip held his hand to his heart. "That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me."

"Really?" Frankie beamed.

"You betcha," Trip nodded. "But did you have to tear up the yard to make it happen?"

"No?"

Erika had hoped that that conclusion would have occurred to her daughter in a more confident manner, but she would take what she could get. "No," she said. "Now, tell Trip that you are sorry for digging up his flowers."

"I'm sorry," Frankie sighed, slightly disinterested and probably, Erika thought, looking for another thing to destroy.

"All is forgiven, kiddo," Trip said, giving her a tight squeeze.

"C'mere, little dirt monster," Jon said, holding out his arms for their daughter. Let's get you brushed off." Frankie jumped eagerly into his arms.

"Trip, I'm so sorry about all of this," Erika said, gesturing at the mess. "We can help you…."

"No need, Erika. It's a wedding," he smiled as if that would explain it all. "Besides, when she gets married, I'm going to have a hell of story to tell at the reception."

"No!" Frankie giggled.

"There you are," Jon said holding her up for inspection. "Almost good as new."

"Almost," Erika shook her head. Jon hoisted their middle daughter up onto his shoulders. "Don't let her down from there, okay?"

"That is the plan," he said with a smile. "Now, do you and that handsome little man in your arms want to dance with me and this little destruction unit?"

Erika laughed as Frankie pulled on her father's ears and Ben tugged on her hair. "Why not?"

Her husband led her out to the dance floor, one hand carefully holding Frankie. "Do you remember when we got married?" he asked as they began to dance. She nodded. "I didn't think I could ever be happier than I was that day," he sighed. "But now look at us."

"You've grown up, Jon," she smiled as she adjusted their youngest on her hip. "Let's hope these three do too."

This wedding had been a long time in the making.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

###

"Trip, hang back a minute would you?" Jon said as he stood up from his desk watching the rest of the officers leave the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Erika give him a look before leaving as well. She knew exactly what he wanted to talk about because she had been treated to the midnight version of the same conversation the night before. She had been so interested in what he was saying that she threw not one but two pillows at him until he finally let her fall back asleep. Now he watched as she gave Trip a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and closed the door behind her.

"What's up?" Trip said, easing himself into one of the chairs in the office. He casually rested his foot up on his knee and began absently playing with Jon's beloved water polo ball.

"Can you help me understand why something called the FTL engine project wants me to approve a massive resource transfer?" Jon asked, handing Trip a padd.

"You mean the jump drive."

"The what?"

"Didn't you ever pay attention in school?" Trip chucked the ball at him and Jon was beginning to feel like this conversation was going to go the way of the one he had with his wife. "A jump drive is a faster-than-light engine that allows for instantaneous transit from one point in space to another."

"Like a transporter?"

Trip buried his head in his hands and groaned. Obviously not, Jon thought to himself.

"Try and think about it this way. Our warp engines allow ships enter into subspace while still encasing our ships in a bubble of real time."

"That part I remember," Jon snapped sarcastically.

"Listen, it's been a long time since you've had to think about this stuff," Trip held up his hands defensively.

"Like when I helped design the ship that broke the warp 2 barrier," Jon countered.

"Right," Trip rolled his eyes. "Because you weren't spending all your time with AG and Erika breaking the ships that I was trying to build. Anyway, the jump drive is different. It compresses your plotted course trajectory and shoots the ship through it instantly." He snapped his fingers. "Point A to Point B in the time it takes you to say 'Warp factor 3.'"

Jon nodded, actually understanding something for a change. "So why now? Why is this project coming to me now?"

"Well, I'm assuming they finally got the thing to work."

Jon felt his jaw drop. "It's never been tested?"

"Oh sure it's been tested. It just hasn't ever worked."

"Trip…"

"Sir, you gotta understand that while your daddy and old Doc Cochrane were playing with warp drives and pissing off the Vulcans, there were other teams that were established to deal with other modes of transport. There was a very real chance back then that the warp drive wasn't going to pan out and we were going to need to find something else to power our ships at faster-than-light speeds." Trip picked up a model of one of the first commercially built warp engines that Jon had on his desk and looked it over approvingly.

Jon frowned as he watched Trip. There had never been any doubt in his mind growing up that the warp engine would succeed and that it would change the world that he lived in. His father had been so whole-heartedly devoted to the project that Jon had never even considered that it might fail. It was only when he joined Starfleet and later the NX program that he began to realize that others didn't share his confidence. In fact, some openly doubted whether the warp two barrier could even be broken.

"But we built the warp drive," Jon said pointing to the model in his friend's hands. "We broke warp 2, 3, 4, and 5 and we've got people working on warp 7 right now. Why should I care about this antiquated project?"

"Instantaneous short-range transport would be an incredible asset to our fleet," Trip said as he nodded over at a nearby plot board where tiny bluish holographic models of all the ships in the fleet hovered, scattered all over the map. "Short jumps could be used for resupplies so ships wouldn't have to be pulled out of formation when they needed to reload," Trip continued. "You could do multiple jumps in a row to create a line from Earth to any of our bases in as little as a day. Crews that would be away from their families for months could jump home for leave. Take your pick. There are plenty of benefits."

"So why haven't we used it yet?" Jon asked but he had a feeling he knew the answer. When Starfleet put development on the backburner it meant that there was a major hang up.

"The stresses that one of these ships would be under are incredible. You remember those beam problems you had on Enterprise a while back? This is ten times worse. Instantly slamming back and forth between real space and subspace requires inertial dampeners, gravity compensators, you name it." Trip smacked his hands together for effect. "And that is just to keep the ship from smashing in on itself during reentry. Now imagine what we would have to do to keep people alive in those conditions. We are talking extreme physical stress with the possibility of inadvertent time dilation and gravity compression, not to mention the fact that none of our ships currently have seat belts." Jon laughed but Trip went on. "Admiral, these ships have to be built like tanks. Flying tanks."

Okay, Jon thought to himself, the jump drive was about as safe as putting a firecracker in a garbage compactor. Not that one of his kids had recently done that and not that he had spent the better part of yesterday trying to clean up the mess on both the walls and the luckily uninjured child. And not that he had managed to get the kid into the sink to be hosed off and collected the majority of the shredded, smoking bits of garbage, only to have another child turn on the ceiling fan and send everything up in a cloud of debris. And not that it was at that precise moment that he had received a report about a project with a weird name that wanted his full support. None of that had actually happened.

Jon shook his head trying to focus again on the report. His eyes trailed down the page until he saw a distance chart that had been left empty. "What is the range on these jumps?" he asked.

"Not much," Trip admitted. "A couple lightyears right now, maybe. Nothing like what we are going to need to make this a serious component in the fleet. Last I heard they had a serious overheating problem that forced them to minimize the distance of the jumps."

Jon frowned as he kept reading, growing a frustrated with the lack of practical information the report actually contained. "What about computing power? How much does it take to calculate a course like that?"

Trip shrugged. "No more or less than our ships use now for warp trajectories. But there has to be safeguards built in, no doubt about it. With a warp drive, you can fall out of warp any time you need to. With a jump drive, you hit the button and that is it. There is no opt out."

"So if you plot a course directly into a sun…"

"… you're dead before you know what happened."

"Great. This sounds like a fantastic way to travel." Jon shook his head and sighed. "Would these things be able to run on ships that currently already have warp reactors or would it be one mode of transport per ship?"

"You could probably retrofit some of our ships to have jump drives. The older ones, most likely the Intrepids, might not be able to handle the stresses but the newer classes like the Hellenics should be okay."

"Should?" Jon raised an eyebrow.

"No one really knows."

"Not until I authorize an expansion of their project."

"Are you going to do it?"

"I really don't know, Trip. I'm still not convinced that they are safe or that they can meet a need in the fleet that our engines currently are not able to," he looked down at the report. "And I'm not sure what to make of a project that hasn't made really any substantial contributions to space travel in over 80 years."

"Have you talked to any of the project directors yet?" Trip asked.

Jon shook his head. "I'm going down there tomorrow for the official tour but I wanted to talk to you before I did."

"So you didn't look like an idiot when you asked them if it worked like a transporter?" Trip laughed.

"Something like that," Jon admitted.

"One other thing you should consider is that with the warp drive, we had the Vulcans," Trip said. We had other allies who used this form of interstellar transportation and we could turn to them for guidance when we came up against a problem."

"Whether they actually helped or not was another thing," Jon muttered.

"But my point is that we had help. We don't have help on jump drives. We have yet to find another species that has developed this technology so when something goes wrong or we run into a serious issue, there is no one to turn to. We are figuring this one out all on our own. And that is bound to take a little longer." Trip ran his hand through his hair and looked up at Jon. "I know you think that our warp development was held back but think about how much worse off we would be if we had done this flying solo. It took us a while to get where we are right now and we had a lot of help along the way, some of it requested some it forced down our throats. But it was help all the same. Jon, I'm betting these jump drive guys have been alone in the basement of the engineering building for god knows how long and they think we've all forgotten about them."

"You sound like you think we should support this program," Jon said as he watched Trip stretch his legs up on the chair next to him.

"What harm could it do?" Trip shrugged. "Let them experiment. Let them try new things. Let them use their creativity. If you don't, you're no better than the …"

Jon held up his hand. "Don't say it."

"Well," Trip gave him a half smile. "You know what I mean. Think about it this way. The FTL program has continued to exist all these years because the men and women who sat in that chair before you all thought it was a worthwhile idea. Who are you to go against what they started?"

"An arrogant ass who thinks that warp engines are the end-all-be-all?" Jon offered.

"Is that what your wife called you last night when you bugged her about this?"

"How do you know I talked to her about this last night?" Jon asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Please. I've known you two long before any of these ships had engines. I know what 'that look' means," Trip rolled his eyes imitating Erika's most annoyed expression. "You woke her up in the middle of the night so you could complain about how it was a waste to bother with any other type of engine, didn't you?" Jon just reached for the water polo ball."And I'll bet you are going to do the same thing tonight. Only this time you'll say 'Hey hon, Trip was telling me about this great experimental engine but I sure don't know if it will work right. What do you think?' and before she can even open her mouth, you've already started talking again."

"Don't you mean before she can answer I've already been smacked on the back of the head?" Jon rubbed his head and frowned. Trip laughed and Jon threw the ball back at him only to have Trip catch it in one smooth motion.

"Let her sleep tonight," Trip advised. "Let her rest and don't worry about this thing. You can make up your mind tomorrow."

"Thanks, Trip."

"You can bug her again tomorrow night." Trip ducked instinctively, only to realize he had the only thing in the office that Jonathan Archer was legally allowed to throw at him.

"In all honesty, do you think this thing will work?" Jon asked quietly.

"I really don't know. I don't know if it will work and revolutionize the way we build our spaceships and structure our fleet. I don't know if it will even be able to jump a full lightyear. I don't know if in 100 or 200 years any one will have ever heard of the jump drive. Sometimes, you just gotta take a chance."

"I think you're right," Jon sighed.

"That's why they let me have my own ship," Trip said as he stood to go. "Let me know how the tour goes. I'll be interested to see how they are doing."

"You want to come with?" Jon asked.

"You betcha," Trip said with a smile.

"Good. Because chances are, I'm not going to be able to explain any of it to you when I'm done."

###


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A/N: This wasn't at all what I had imagined I was going to write when I sat down today. But I think it came together nicely. As always, please read and review and feel free to let me know if you have any requests that you would like to see in this series!

###

"Everyone asleep up there?" Jon asked as Erika sat down on the couch with him, a stack of padds in her hands.

"Mmm hmm," she nodded but then stopped. "Well, they are all in their beds with their pajamas on and the lights off. So that has to count for something."

"I say we see the first one in fifteen minutes," Jon shook his head with a smile.

"Ten and you'll do the dinner dishes if you lose." Erika held out her hand and Jon shook it.

"Deal." He peered over her shoulder at what she was reading. "What do you have for tonight?" he asked.

"An analysis of quantum mechanical theory as it applies to long range real-time communication strategy," Erika said without looking up. "And you?"

"Definitely not that interesting."

"Hmmm." Clearly, his wife wasn't really paying attention but that didn't stop him. He had been waiting all evening to talk to her about this.

"I'm reading an assignment for Jeff's starship mechanics class," he said.

Now Erika did look up. "You're the Starfleet Chief of Staff and they have you grading papers?"

"They've already gotten their grades. I'm just looking over their work to see if they have any new ideas. They were asked to design their own starship, nacelle layout, quarters configuration, the whole thing. I guess Jeff has been talking to them about operational efficiency and design technique so he wanted to see how much they picked up."

"And?" She was actually paying attention now.

"And they came up with some very cool designs. I mean look at this. Instead of having the nacelles hanging behind and above the main part of the ship, these kids have them lowered and running parallel. This one has them aligned vertically with one nacelle above and one below." He smiled as he watched Erika examine the plans.

"Can they still generate a stable warp field?" Erika asked, leaning over his shoulder and pointing to one of the schematics.

"They've got the projections right here. It makes for a tighter field but it should be able to exceed warp 5.3 without having the same structural issues that we currently face. But it isn't only the external designs that they are working with. They've got all different layouts for everything from the bridge to the engine room. Take a look at this one," he handed her a padd with a sketch of an engine room but instead of having a warp reactor lying across the bay horizontally, it was standing upright. "They've got the core vertical. The lines go straight in and out through the main conduit channels. This engineering room is two stories high but it is less than half the diameter of the current configuration."

"So these kids want us to build taller starships?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe," he shrugged. "It is worth looking into." Before Erika could even respond to him on that he had handed her another padd, this time displaying various bridge layouts.

"I don't understand this one," Erika said examining the plans closely. "They put in a secondary pilot's station." She traced the two consoles with her finger. "One for each nacelle?"

Jon smiled but shook his head. Engineering had never really been Erika's specialty. "The second one isn't for another pilot. It is for the navigation officer."

"The what?"

"Think about it. We've always had our pilots also charting our courses by programing it into the main computer and waiting for it to spit out a proper course."

"Unless they are idiots like you and decide to do it themselves." Erika leaned over to give him a kiss on the forehead.

"Right," he said, giving her a look. Back in the NX program, he was known for being incredibly impatient with the then state-of-the-art nav computers that they had as they slowly crunched data and calculated course corrections for the faster-than-light engines. There was one trial run in particular where he had refused to wait for his data and instead just punched his controller up to full throttle and went for it. When he dropped out of warp three seconds later after someone back on the ground had implemented the emergency shut off procedure, the first thing he heard was Forrest yelled that it was a miracle he hadn't killed himself.

"You could have flown into a damn sun, you raging lunatic! You have got to be the stupidest idiot on the face of this planet or any other one. I ought to have your ass canned so fast not even a warp drive could beat you!" Jon could almost see him sputtering, his face getting redder by the moment. From the way A.G. had told the story, everyone else in the control room had been fighting back laughter as the Admiral yanked a headset off of the Capcom and started talking directly to one very stunned Commander Archer. Normally, procedure required that only one person communicate directly with the pilot in the spacecraft so as not to overwhelm them with a barrage of commands and typically that one person was another pilot. That had been one of A.G.'s legacies. He had said over and over that the only person who could understand what was going on in the mind of a pilot was another pilot. The only person he wanted shouting orders at him while he was flying faster than the speed of light was someone who had flown a ship faster than the speed of light. So one of the other pilots would serve as a conduit through which all the other controllers and technicians could funnel orders to the pilot. But even with that sort of efficiency, the pilots occasionally didn't give a damn what anyone on the ground was telling them to do.

That had been exactly what had happened that day. The controllers had placed Jon's test on a hold for what seemed like hours as they worked on correcting the nav computer so it wouldn't keep spitting out absolute junk. In the meantime, Jon was trapped in a spacecraft floating in between Jupiter and Saturn and bored out of his mind. Every minute or so he kept getting on the line and arguing that he really should be able to do his test even without the correct coordinates because for the love of god his flight was going to be incredibly short so why the hell did he need a computer to tell him what to do.

Apparently he needed the computer to tell him quite a lot, he realized when Erika had wrestled the headset away from Forrest. Somehow Jon had forgotten that the entire point of the test had been to see how the nav computer worked with a pilot actually controlling the engine. Without the nav computer, the flight was worthless. And dangerous. Incredibly, stupidly dangerous.

After Forrest had stormed out of the room barking that Erika had better figure out how to deal with Jon, she had guided him through the reentry procedure and brought him back down to Earth. For the moment, it had just been the two of them on the line as she calmed him down and the rest of the control team had faded away. It wasn't until Erika slapped him on the back of the head as he was getting out of the cockpit that he remembered that he had actually screwed something up.

"It's a wonder no one booted you out of the program right then and there," Erika said now, shaking her head and scrolling through the designs.

"Hey, if they let me stay after the little stunt A.G. and I pulled, I figured I was golden," Jon said with a cocky grin. "Anyway," he turned back to the padd, "these students think that we should have one officer control the pitch, roll and yaw as well as the speed of the engines over all, and one officer in charge of navigation."

"Do you think it makes sense?" she asked.

"I'm not sure yet. But it is a neat idea. It would definitely fill a need that we have on the bridges of our ships." He paused for a moment, remembering their days in the NX program. "Do you ever wish that we could design ships again?" Jon asked, suddenly wistful.

"No, but I bet you do."

Jon smiled. "I've got to thank Jeff for letting me read this things. These kids have some very imaginative ideas."

"Do these kids say anything about long range, real-time strategy?" Erika said, picking up her neglected report.

"No," Jon muttered, "but I think that one does." He pointed up at the stairs where their youngest was standing at the railing, looking down at them.

"How did he get out of his crib?" Erika whispered, leaning over to Jon.

"He probably had help," he shook his head as he stood up. "Ben? What are you doing, buddy?" he said as he walked up to the stairs and lifted his son over the gate. "Trouble sleeping?" Ben nodded. "And did Addie get you out of your crib?"

"He was half way out on his own!" Adalie called as she ran down the stairs.

"Well, at least he didn't jump like Frankie did," Erika sighed. "All right, let's go. Back to bed, everyone," she said, pointedly looking at their middle daughter who had now joined them downstairs, eager to witness any excitement. "Frankie, go. Ads, you too."

"Come on, Addie. Let's get these two to bed and then go watch a movie." Jon said as he ruffled her hair and carried the toddler back upstairs.

"Jon!"

"What?" He scooped up Frankie with his free arm.

"Don't take too long with her," Erika nodded at their eldest who was following behind him dutifully.

"I won't," Jon muttered obediently.

"Besides," Erika called after him, "You have to do the dinner dishes."

###


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

A/N: Another chapter that didn't turn out as planned but the end result was good. Apologies for the delay in updating. Writing has taken a back seat recently. As always, please read and review!

###

Ben Archer's first word was "two." It shouldn't have surprised Erika at all. It was his number. He had two dogs, two sisters, two parents, two arms, two legs, two hands and two feet. His whole little world revolved around that simple number. It had been his number since long before he was born. He was conceived two years after Frankie, Erika had been on bed-rest with him for two weeks early on in the pregnancy, and he had been born only two hours after her water broke aboard the Enterprise.

Two was also the number of times his father hit his head on the mobile hanging above his crib before he learned his lesson. Two was the number of times the dogs' barking had woken him up as an infant before Erika had nearly soundproofed his room in a desperate attempt to get him to take a nap. There were two starships in the family, two admirals, and two captains who spent more time in the Archer home than at their own houses. The number made sense in relation to Ben's life.

It was an odd first word, she thought, remembering the first words of her daughters. Adalie was a happy and sweet baby so it was no real shock that the first word she spoke "hi." She said it all the time. She would say it the moment either she or Jon came into her room to lift her out of the crib in the morning and she would say it in the evening when they laid her down to go to sleep. At first, Erika wasn't sure if Addie knew what it meant. But she seemed to understand quickly what it meant and her vocabulary quickly expanded to include other words besides greetings. For the first few months though, Jon would avoid saying "hi" in response to Adalie because he knew if he got her started, she would just keep saying it for the rest of the day. Erika remembered one day in particular when both she and Jon realized that they might have a problem.

"Hi Addie!" Jon had said that morning before realizing what he had done.

"Hi!" Adalie had chirped right back at him. "Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi."

He had picked her up from her highchair and taken her over to the sink to wash her off. "I don't know how you did it, Addie girl, but you managed to get your peas in your hair and on your toes."

"Hi!"

"Yes, hi," he had sighed as he contemplated dunking her in the sink or hosing her down. "Hey Rike!" he had called over his shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Could you bring down a clean outfit for her?"

"Hi!" Adalie had tugged on his ear. "Hi. Hi. Hi."

"Hi Ads…."

"Hey Rike!"

"Hi!"

Erika had poked her head in the kitchen at that point and saw that her husband was holding their toddler over the sink, bouncing her up and down in the hopes of dislodging the bits of baby food stuck to her. Jon was muttering to himself but Adalie was still babbling calmly.

"Erika?" Jon had glanced up and given her an overwhelmed look. Before she could respond, Adalie had chimed in with her new favorite word.

"Hi!"

"Erika, how do you get her to stop?" She had just laughed, handed him the clean outfit and told him that he was on his own.

Frankie on the other hand had been quiet and reserved as a baby. In contrast to their outgoing firstborn, their middle child was didn't say a word until fourteen months. In fact, Erika had been so used to Frankie keeping her mouth shut that when Jon told her that Frankie had said her first word, she had told him to stop joking around. Jon had been home on leave and hadn't seen the girls in a few months. They had been at the park and Erika had been busy getting Adalie all buttoned up in her coat that she had managed to wriggle out of, when Jon started shouting.

"Erika! Erika! She said 'yellow!'" he had raced over to her holding Frankie up on his shoulders.

"Don't be ridiculous. Frankie isn't talking yet," she had said as she tugged Addie's hat into place.

"No, I'm serious!" Jon had insisted. "She pointed at the sun and said 'yellow.' Clear as day."

Finally, she had looked up at him and saw that he wasn't kidding. "What?" she asked in disbelief.

"Here, do it again, Frankie. What color is the sun?" he had asked, looking up at their little girl.

"Yellow," Frankie said, just as confident as before. "Yellow." Erika felt her jaw drop.

"And what is color is Addie's hat?" Jon continued, his grin getting bigger.

Frankie put her finger in her mouth and thought for a moment. "Yellow."

"Oh my god, she's right!" Erika gasped.

"I told you!" Jon smiled. "I'll bet she was just waiting for me to get home to start talking."

"Right…" Erika had rolled her eyes but then she thought of something. "Hey Frankie, what color is mama's hair?"

"Yellow."

"So she's not sure what it means exactly…" Jon had muttered, shooting Erika a glare.

"Still," Erika had acknowledged as she leaned over to give Frankie a kiss on the forehead. "Good job, sweetheart."

"Yellow."

"Oh no," Jon had muttered to himself.

Thinking back on it, Erika was fairly certain she knew where each of the girls had learned their words. And she supposed that Ben must have heard them saying the word "two" enough times to pick it up himself. She should probably be glad that he hadn't picked up any of the other phrases that certain captains had been known to drop around the kitchen table.

"Aren't you glad none of our kids' first words was something like 'plasma' or 'warp?'" Jon asked, sitting down on the floor next to where she was playing with Ben. Well, those weren't the words she had been thinking of exactly but sometimes they seemed just as bad.

"We would probably get the bad parenting of the year award for that one," she agreed. Ben toddled over to where his blocks had all been neatly stacked by his older sister and sent them crashing to the floor with one fell swoop. He laughed and then stooped down to pick up a handful of blocks, which he promptly dumped in front of his father.

"Are these for me?" Jon asked. Ben nodded.

"Either that, or he has realized that you do most of the cleaning up around here," she said, nudging him in the side.

"Hey."

"That was a compliment, Jon."

"I knew that." Jon began stacking the blocks but before he even got a foot off the ground, Ben was there ready to knock them down again.

"He's going to be two soon," she sighed as she ran a hand across her baby's hair.

"I know," Jon frowned. "Ever thought about giving him another 'two' by going for another little boy?"

Erika shook her head. "The dream of the entire water polo team is no more." She stopped and looked over at her husband, worried for a moment that she would find disappointment in his face. But all that was there was pure happiness. They had never really talked about a fourth. They were both getting older and the three they had seemed to take every bit of energy they had, not to mention patience, sanity and organizational ability. There had been an implicit understanding that Ben would be their last one, but that was something Erika had felt very comfortable with. Two might have been Ben's number but three was theirs.

Still, as she watched her little boy she couldn't help but think that this was somehow the end of an era. Ben would be the last one to learn how to talk, to start school, to do anything really. Every milestone he hit in life would have a finality that neither of his sisters shared. With Adalie, everything was new and exciting. With Frankie, they had learned how to handle almost every situation from their eldest and now had the opportunity to sit back and enjoy. And now with Ben, there was a mixture of things. There was wonder and amazement that all three of their children could experience the same moments differently and uniquely. There was excitement to see how Ben would differ from his sisters. And as Erika was just beginning to realize, there was sadness because this would be the last time for all of them. Erika shook her head, trying not to dwell on that thought too long.

"Jon?" she asked, realizing that he had never really answered. "Is that…?" She stopped as Ben jumped into his father's lap and began banging blocks together furiously.

"I've got half a team," Jon said with a smile as held Ben's little chubby hands in his much larger ones. "That is all I need."

###


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

A/N: Again, super apologies for taking so long to get this chapter written. More will be coming soon because I have the next one written already. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

###

Trip flopped on the bed with an exhausted sigh causing both Jon and Erika to turn and look at him. They were all exhausted. That was why as soon as the meetings were over, they had both come straight back to their temporary quarters and, after a brief check to make sure that the girls were still happily playing with their babysitter, had crashed on the bed. Jon had even been too tired to put Ben in his crib, instead letting him sleep on his father's chest. Erika had been too tired to complain. They shouldn't have been surprised that Trip was burnt out too, but they were surprised that he had chosen their room instead of his.

"Hi Trip," Jon finally said as Trip stretched out on their bed.

"Mrrggghhh," Trip groaned.

"Why are you in our room?"

"It's cleaner than mine."

Erika frowned. "We've been here two days. How have you already trashed your quarters?"

"If I weren't deader than these treaty negotiations I might be able to tell you," Trip muttered, rolling over and resting his head on Jon's shoulder.

"Okay then," Jon sighed. The status of the treaty was not looking good. Jon supposed he should have realized this when the Coalition Council requested that both he and Erika join the negotiations team. He smiled to himself, remembering how he had joked that sending Erika into delicate negotiations was about as smart as plowing a ship into a minefield. Instead of being offended, Erika had readily agreed. But it turned out that Erika had been the most levelheaded person in the damn room. It was a wonder none of them had been shot or court-martialed yet.

On some level Jon knew it would all be worth it. This was the first real test of the defense pact since the end of the war. Since Coridan had backed out of the treaty, everyone had been holding their breath waiting for a time when an attack would come and the question of helping an unaffiliated planetary government would be brought front and center. But no one thought it would be this problematic. Several members of the Coalition were feeling particularly vindictive. Jon couldn't help but feel for them. When the Coridanites had sent in their formal withdrawal it had almost destabilized the entire effort to form a mutual defense pact in the first place. Now they were requesting the full protection of what was quickly becoming recognized as one of the most powerful alliances in the quadrant.

So a deal had been brokered: Coridan would get the defensive support they requested along with relief supplies and in exchange they would formally join the Coalition. It had all sounded so simple when the Security Council president had casually walked into his office and asked if Jon had any plans for the weekend. And like an idiot Jon said no. Now here he was, on Deneva, because someone had decided that Starfleet should mediate the negotiations. At least they had provided a babysitter.

Jon's train of thought came to an abrupt end when he heard someone begin snoring. Sure enough, Trip Tucker had fallen asleep. Jon nudged him awake with his elbow.

"Can't I sleep here?" Trip asked, waking up.

"Sure," Jon said at the same time that Erika said, "no." Jon gave his wife a knowing look and then proceeded to hand his sleeping two year old over to Trip. "There is a price if you stay. Keep this one asleep."

"How hard can that be?"

"Ha!" Erika exclaimed before Jon clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Just keep him quiet," Jon sighed, turning over to face his wife. He brushed her hair back from her face and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

"Jon…." Erika groaned, glancing over to where Trip was still laying on their bed. "Your second born is on our bed."

"I know," Jon sighed as he closed his eyes.

"Hey! Do you think he still does it?" Trip asked, suddenly wide-awake.

"Does what?" Jon murmured, as Erika placed her hand on his mouth.

"Don't encourage him," she whispered.

"You know, his special trick?" Trip continued, looking down at the sleeping toddler in his arms.

"Why don't you ask him a question and find out," Jon sighed.

Trip gently placed a hand on Ben, just like he used to do when Ben was in Erika's belly. Jon could almost hear him thinking for a moment, trying to think of the right question to ask. "Hey Ben," Trip finally whispered, "Do you think we should build engines with nacelles that can rotate?"

Curiosity got the better of him and Jon found himself rolling over to watch. There was no movement.

"Huh," Trip shrugged. "I guess not."

"Wait a minute," Jon said. "How do you know that really was a 'no' answer? You've got to ask him a question that we know has a yes or no answer, not some hypothetical engineering question."

"It made you sound worse than Veronica," Erika muttered. "Try an easier one, like this." She reached across Jon and placed a hand on her youngest child. "Ben, is your father crazy?" This time there was a very definite kick.

"See? He's still got it." She turned back over and pulled a pillow over her ears.

"Hey wait, Erika! He can still do it! He's still got his magic eight ball powers!" Jon exclaimed.

"And now you can all ask him questions without putting your hands on my stomach or waking me up in the middle of the night."

"You did that?" Trip asked cautiously.

"Never mind that," he frowned at his wife. "Try another one."

"Hmmm, okay. Are these negotiations as dead as they seem?" Ben gave a soft little kick and Trip looked over at Jon, raising an eyebrow hopefully. Jon just shook his head.

Erika was right though. One of Jon's favorite things to do while she was pregnant was to ask their magic eight ball baby all sorts of questions. It wasn't his fault that he usually thought of his questions once Erika had finally fallen asleep. He would try to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake his heavily pregnant wife, but as Erika put it, it was hard to sleep through someone trying to kick a hole in your stomach.

After Ben had been born, he continued to surprise them with his incredible intuitive abilities. He seemed to understand everything that was going on around him and was able to make sense of it all, as only a two year old could. As soon as he learned to walk, his favorite game was to grab his parents' shoes from around the house and bring them to wherever they were. He always knew whose shoes were whose. Jon had thought it was amazing. Erika thought it would have been pretty hard to miss that the giant ones were his, not hers. But Ben expanded his game to include his sisters' shoes and those of anyone who came over to their home. You could put out an assortment of seven or eight pairs of shoes, each belonging to a different person and Ben would make sure they would get back to the right person. He would carefully stoop down to pick them up and toddle his way around the house, checking each room until he found the person he was looking for. Then he would drop the shoes at their feet with a big smile. Or if it was Trip, he would run over to the couch where Trip had no doubt passed out and drop the shoes on his head. Maybe that was what they had to do tonight.

"So say your daddy likes the idea of separate navigation and conn officers," Trip was whispering to the baby. "Should I let him use my ship as the test pig?" Jon reached over and gently pulled Ben's little leg to give Trip a sharp kick. "Ow!" he yelped, before realizing what he had done and looked down to make sure someone was still sleeping. Sure enough he was. Jon didn't know what Erika had been complaining about; the kid was just like him, he could sleep through anything.

"What about these negotiations? Do you think we will reach a solution before your daddy and mommy resign from the service?" Trip asked, as Jon gave him a glare. Sure enough Ben gave a little kick.

"Good," Jon sighed.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" Trip asked. Jon didn't even have to look over to see what the result was. All he heard was Trip mumble "fine," and then quietly put the baby back in his crib.

"Good night, Trip," Erika groaned as she sleepily threw a pillow in his direction.

It was going to be a long couple of days.

###


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

###

Erika Hernandez never imagined that something as mundane as giving her husband a haircut would cause her so much trouble. She didn't even want to give him a hair cut in the first place. She had thought he looked fine, albeit a little scruffy, but absolutely fine if he just brushed it a little. Jon on the other hand didn't think he looked fine. He was leaving for another three-week conference in a few hours and didn't think the Starfleet Chief of Staff should look scruffy. Erika had mentioned that a haircut wasn't going to fix that and her husband had threatened to assign her to join him on the trip.

"Come on, Rike!" he pleaded with her as she alternated between throwing clothes at him and throwing them directly in the suitcase. Getting a hair cut wasn't the only thing he had left for the last minute.

"Pack, Jon! Pack! Your shuttle is leaving soon and I swear to god…"

"I can't go like this!"

"Just brush it! I'm sure it will be fine."

"I'm sure it won't," he sighed, collapsing on the bed and sending articles of clothing everywhere.

"Jon!"

"You used to cut your brothers' hair, didn't you?" he looked up at her hopefully.

"Yeah and I nearly took Simon's ear off," she muttered, trying to corral the clothes back into some semblance of order.

"I don't need ears."

"You are going to a conference where you will be spending 75% of your time listening," she said as she handed him a clean uniform. "You are going to need ears. And don't just shove that in your bag."

"Erika, I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't a last minute emergency. Just a trim, okay?"

"Fine," she huffed. "I'll cut your hair, you stupid moron. Sit down before I change my mind."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. He handed her a pair of scissors and eagerly sat down in the nearest chair.

"You really are worried about this conference, aren't you?" she asked as she began to work. Of course he was. Everyone was. After the success of the Coridan Conference, the political leaders of the Coalition wanted to take advantage of the strong spirit of cooperation and community. They had been talking about expanding the Coalition for years, ever since its inception in fact. Her husband had been one of the first to contend that a mutual assistance and defense pact was a fine starting point but realistically, the four main separate governments of the group would have to be integrated in order for real progress to happen. At first, no one else had seen the need. Earth was perfectly fine keeping to itself and so were the other Coalition members. But the war had changed all that. The governments and economies of four separate systems were struggling to recover and learning to rely on each other more and more. Each year it seemed that the Coalition treaty was amended to call for new cooperative endeavors, each time bringing them closer and closer to a unified system. And now it was time to figure out if a federated system could really replace the Coalition.

So a series of four conferences had been set up, one on each of the major partner home worlds. The first, the one that Jon was worrying about, was on Vulcan. The Earth delegation was made up of their council members, government leaders and Jon, who had been championing the idea all along. Jon was also there for another important reason, one that Erika didn't like to think about. Should the alliance give way to a unified system of government, Starfleet, the organization that she had devoted her entire career to, would change permanently.

She shook her head and focused her attention back on her husband who seemed to be doing a very good job of sitting still for a long amount of time.

"You used to wear your hair like this," she said, running her fingers through his brown hair.

"Back when I was a captain?" Jon laughed. "I didn't have time for haircuts."

"And you do now?" she gave him a slap across the shoulder.

"Ow! Most of the time I do!" He sighed. "Thank you, Rike, really. I just didn't want to go in there looking…"

"Looking like you hadn't been out of the captaincy for almost a decade?" she smiled. "You want to impress them."

"Most of the Vulcans remember my father and still think of me as that eager little kid itching for adventure."

"I liked that guy."

"I'm not sure he's the one who can organize a new interplanetary government," Jon frowned.

"And you think the guy with lopsided hair can?"

"Yes I…" he stopped. "Rike!"

"I told you I was no good at this. Just brush it back a bit. It'll be fine."

"Actually," he said, looking in the mirror. "It looks very nice."

"Thank you. Hold still," she took the mirror away from him, "I'm not done yet."

She felt Jon turn his head at the sound of a thump and was just about to scold him when she realized what was going on. Ben was sitting on top of his father's feet, happily playing with his shoes and trying to eat a random sock that Erika was sure she had packed already. Jon bent down and lifted their son up onto his lap.

"Hey buddy," Jon said as Ben smiled up at him. Ben reached one chubby hand up as Erika's own hands made one final check over her handiwork. Everything looked good.

"Did Mama cut my hair?" Jon asked Ben who was still entranced.

"Is Mama ever going to cut your hair again?"

"Rike!" he sighed as he stood up and brushed off the last little bits of hair. "Thank you, darling."

"Do you feel better now?" she asked, placing a hand on his chest.

"Enough to take on the whole Coalition," he smiled as Ben tugged on his ear.

"Good."

Ben reached up to ruffle Jon's hair and his father returned the gesture, leaving their toddler with a tussled mess of brown hair. Jon looked up at Erika and raised an eyebrow.

"You know…"

"No!"

"This little guy could use a haircut too!"

"Jon!"

By some miracle, Jon had made it to the shuttle on time. All in all, giving her husband a haircut hadn't been so bad. If only it had stopped there. She had almost forgotten about the whole thing until she was trying to get all three children out the door to watch the conference's opening ceremonies.

"Girls!" Erika called, balancing her son on her hip. "Let's go! Daddy's broadcast is starting soon!"

They had been waiting for this. Jon had left three days earlier and now after hours of preliminary negotiations, the conference was about to officially open. All the seating arrangements had been agreed upon, the official languages set, even the beverage list had been open to debate, much to Jon's frustration. But today was the day they actually got to begin work on what had become the most important and captivating story in the news. Starfleet was transmitting the ceremony live to their largest auditorium and Erika had a feeling that every single news crew was going to want to get a shot of the chief of staff's wife and three children eagerly watching the broadcast. If they ever got out the door.

Erika checked her watch. "Addie! Frankie! Let's go!"

"We're coming!" One of them called down the stairs. At this moment, Erika wasn't sure which one of them it was but she honestly didn't care. They were late.

She headed up the stairs, Ben pulling a lock of her hair out of its careful clip. She gave him a look but he only gazed back at her with the same goofy grin as his father. This was probably the first time she had worn her dress uniform, heels and all, in months and it was definitely the first time she had tried to wrangle up all three of her children in a skirt.

She got to the door of Frankie's room and stopped. It was empty, never a good sign. "Frankie?" she called hesitantly.

"In here!" came the reply from the direction of Adalie's room. Erika sighed, adjusting the toddler on her hip and made her way to the door. She froze when she looked inside. Adalie had Frankie sitting in a chair and was in the middle of cutting her hair…

_Oh no._

"Addie! What are you doing?"

"Giving Frankie a haircut."

"I can see that," she said, looking down at the uneven locks of hair scattering the floor. "Why?" she asked, carefully taking the scissors out of her seven year old's hands.

"Because she needed one," Adalie said simply.

"Right now?" Erika winced.

"You said we had to look nice for the broadcast."

"Frankie looked fine the way she was," Erika said, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.

"No I didn't!" Frankie stomped her foot on the floor, sending tufts of hair everywhere. "My hair needed to be cut."

"Really?"

"Yes really!" Frankie folded her arms and frowned, a gesture that seemed all too familiar to Erika.

She turned back to Adalie. "So you decided to cut your sister's hair?"

"Daddy said that you had to cut his hair because he didn't have time to get someone else to. You've been telling us all morning that we are out of time so…"

"So you thought this would help."

"Yeah!" Adalie smiled, but then frowned when she saw that her mother wasn't smiling too.

Erika sighed and put Ben down on the floor, carefully away from the scene of the crime. "Let's look at the damage," she said as she placed her hands on Frankie's shoulders and looked her over. It was pretty bad. Several chunks of her long brown hair had been chopped off at the shoulder on one side, and all in varying lengths. At least Addie hadn't tried to give her little sister bangs though, she thought with a shake of her head.

"Okay, girls," she finally said. "When we get home, we are going to have a long talk about haircuts and scissors. For now, Frankie, how do you feel about short hair?" Frankie nodded enthusiastically. Carefully and as quickly as she could, Erika trimmed the rest of her daughter's hair to be at least one length. Frankie giggled as the long locks fell to the ground. Adalie, to her credit, made sure Ben didn't try to eat any of it.

Finally, it was done. They could deal with the mess later. For now, they had to leave.

"Mama cut my hair just like Daddy's!" Frankie proclaimed loudly as Erika bundled her into her coat.

"And you still have both ears, don't you kiddo?"

Frankie reached up and grabbed both ears triumphantly. "Yes!"

"Well, when your daddy gets home from saving the world we can blame him for all of this."

"Okay!"

###


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A/N: I wasn't planning on updating so soon but Bones and Pink made a request so who am I to turn them down?

###

"We're finally here," Trip said as she stepped off the lift.

"Thank god," Erika whispered to herself. If she was going to be cooped up on a ship for days with nothing to do, why couldn't it have been Columbia?

"You want to do the honors?" Trip asked, glancing at the viewscreen.

"Um no. This is your ship."

"Fine," Trip grumbled and gestured to his communications officer. "Open a channel to the station."

"Channel open, sir."

"Starbase 2, this is Captain Tucker of Enterprise declaring arrival and requesting docking coordinates." He clicked off the mic and turned to Erika. "Now why is that even my job?" he sighed. "Shouldn't the comm officer handle that sort of thing? Or a docking coordinator?"

"Jon always thought it was best for the captain to handle the first communication with any starbase or station," Erika shrugged as she looked over the comm officer's shoulder at the incoming and outgoing traffic. The poor kid had enough to deal with as it was.

"Yeah, well Jon isn't here now is he?"

"No, he's there," Erika pointed out the viewport at the starbase. Jon was on the base in high orbit over Andoria. It was the newest part of Starfleet's exploratory bases and currently was the one furthest from Earth. The design was something Erika had never seen before, a round sphere in the center surrounded by spokes which each ended in a docking ring that could support up to five ships each. It looked like it had the capacity of every current space station combined, which was probably not a bad idea considering how many different ships were going to be coming here in the next few days.

_"Enterprise, this is operations control on Starbase 2. We've got a bit of a hold up at the docks right now. If you'd remain in orbit for a few minutes we should have things cleared up soon."_

The voice on the other end of the transmission sounded harried. Erika couldn't blame them. When it was time for the Andorians to host their portion of the conference, the Vulcans and the Tellerites had balked at actually holding it on the surface of that frozen world. The starbase was chosen as a compromise location since it was currently being jointly administered by the Andorian Guard and Starfleet. The only problem was the base wasn't yet completed. So Jon had taken several of his staff and a couple ships full of corpsmen almost a month ago to make sure everything would be ready in time.

To Erika, it seemed like it had only been yesterday that Jon was rushing off to the first of the conferences on Vulcan. Frankie's hair had grown out a lot since then and you could barely tell that her sister had hacked almost all of it off only three months earlier. Their lives had become a complicated mess, the kind that they had hoped to avoid by giving up their ships all those years ago. But with the federation talks going on it seemed that Jon was needed everywhere but Earth. Ironically, the administration of the fleet would run perfectly fine without the chief of staff. The conferences on the other hand would not.

The whole situation had left Jon incredibly frustrated. He felt like he was neglecting his duty to Starfleet but at the same time he wanted desperately to be a part of the negotiations. The talks got him more energized than starship design ever had. When he was away, he would call her almost every night to tell her what had happened that day. Erika didn't really care. She would have taken starship design over diplomacy any day but it made her smile to see how happy Jon was.

Because Jon had left for the base so early, it had been Erika's job as one of the highest-ranking officers in the fleet to ferry the rest of the United Earth delegation to Andoria and so she called Trip. Veronica had been conveniently out on a deep space patrol and had flat out told her that she would rather die than surve as a diplomatic tugboat. Trip hadn't been able to say no to her. She hadn't exactly played fair with him though. She had told Trip that Ben had something to ask him. As usual, Trip's face lit up and he eagerly scooped up the toddler in his arms. Without missing a beat, Ben said, "go see Daddy?" and pointed at his mother. Trip's heart had melted and he had agreed before Erika could even brief him on the mission.

Much to Ben's shock and disappointment, he and his sisters weren't allowed to come along. Jon had begged but Erika insisted that the kids stay with Simon and Maria. After all, they were going to an under construction space station. A space station in fact whose officers probably weren't even sure how to handle a basic docking procedure.

"I see four maybe five ships out there," Trip said looking out the viewscreen. " Two Agronas, a Hellenic, and a couple of Legorsas. Addie could've had them in by now. What the hell is going on out there?"

"I'll be someone just screwed up and missed their departure slot. One foul up like that and the whole line goes down," Erika sighed as she slipped into the captain's chair. Trip gave her a funny look.

"And what do you think you're doing?"

"What do you think you're doing….." she prompted.

"… Admiral," he grumbled. She gave him a smile. She and Jon had teased Trip mercilessly when he struggled with their promotions, insisted that he just call them by their names the way he always had. Unfortunately, this bad habit had stuck and Trip often completely forgot that he couldn't just shout 'hey, you in the hat' and expect the Starfleet Chief of Staff to respond. On the other hand, Jon usually did respond to that one.

"I forgot how uncomfortable these chairs are," she sighed as Trip came over to stand beside her. "There is nowhere on these things for an admiral to stand without being in the way."

"Maybe that is because admirals aren't supposed to be on these things." Trip checked his watch. "They are supposed to stay in the VIP quarters with the rest of the delegation. Okay, that's it. I'm pulling rank." He signaled to the comm officer again who nodded. "Operations control, this is Enterprise actual."

_"Go ahead, Enterprise."_

"Ops, I've got priority one clearance so why don't you just tell us where to park."

_"Excuse me?"_

"You heard me. I've got Admiral Hernandez on board. Do you know who she is?" Trip winked at Erika.

_"Y-yes sir…"_

"Good. Now, why don't we start again." Trip cleared his throat, "Starbase 2 this is Enterprise requesting docking coordinates."

_"Yes sir, right away sir. Proceed to bay 6b." _

"Thank you," he closed the channel and turned to his pilot. "You heard the man, punch it."

Erika watched as the pilot, the comm officer and the docking chief all began to work to bring the large starship in to port. She had seen the procedure a hundred times and commanded it a hundred more but it never failed to fill her with awe. Running lights at their dock flickered on in the darkness, illuminating their way. As they got closer, umbilicals and fuel lines began to creep towards them waiting. Finally the clamps and moorings came in and with a definite thud, Enterprise was docked.

Erika gave Trip a pat on the back. "I'm going to go find my husband and undo whatever damage you just did."

"Wait," he turned as she headed off the bridge. "You aren't leaving me alone with these people are you?"

"I'm sure you'll be able to get them to their suites onboard the station without my help," she gave him a reassuring smile.

"And what if the quartermaster is just as clueless as the operations officer?" Trip groaned as he sunk into his chair.

"Then I suppose you'll have to pull rank again."

###


End file.
